The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has officially launched the College of Nursing, elevating one of the University’s longest-standing and most impactful academic programs to college status. With nearly 1,000 students enrolled across undergraduate and doctoral programs, the College of Nursing becomes UTC’s fifth academic college.
Sisters saving lives
Sisters Amber Honea and Alexis Murray have found their place helping others. The UTC alums are working as nurses for their respective hospitals in Chattanooga. Honea, who received a BSN from UTC in 2014 and an MSN in 2021, is an acute care nurse practitioner with the pulmonology and critical care department at Erlanger Hospital. Murray, who earned a BSN in 2019, is currently enrolled in the DNP program and works at CommonSpirit Memorial Hospital Chattanooga as an ICU floating nurse.
Motorcycles and medicine: DNP student goes from mechanic to finding his calling in acute care
Few people would expect a motorcycle mechanic and a trauma nurse to have much in common. Travis Wright—who has experience with both—can easily make the connection.
Simulated patient, real emotions: AI bringing realism to UTC nursing simulation
Earlier this summer, students in the Doctor of Nursing Practice adult gerontology acute care program piloted an end-of-life training scenario unlike anything they had previously encountered in the University’s Metro Annex Safe Hospital. The twist? Students weren’t just caring for a simulated patient in the mock clinical setting. They also had to navigate a phone conversation with the patient’s daughter, which was played not by a faculty member or actor, but by artificial intelligence.
Call me HAL: UTC nursing students learning from state-of-the-art patient simulator
HAL® S5301, billed as the world’s most advanced interdisciplinary patient simulator, is a new addition to the UTC School of Nursing. HAL has artificial intelligence capabilities and can speak, mimic many different emergent situations such as strokes and heart attacks, and be utilized to practice numerous invasive procedures. “We can make him have a stroke. It can have full facial droop. You can change the eyeballs. It can sweat, it can cry.”
Piggin’ out: Pork ribs help nursing students learn proper surgical procedures
From On Call, a publication of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing: “I went to Main Street Meats, and I’m talking to the guy behind the counter,” said Dr. Christi Denton, assistant professor in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing. “He said, ‘Are you looking for beef or pork ribs?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m a vegetarian. What’s more like human?’”





